A native’s guide to San Francisco Bay Area real estate professionals & cities

Real Estate-Technology

Post navigation

The latest tool available to San Francisco Bay Area Realtors, selling San Francsico real estate, is the new site DataSF.org. Launched by city government, the site is a comprehensive housing mechanism for data sets about San Francisco. The data sets provide Realtors with crucial information that can detail life in the city down to the neighborhood.

What is DataSF?

“DataSF is a clearinghouse of datasets available from the City & County of San Francisco. Our goal in releasing this site is:
(1) improve access to data
(2) help our community create innovative apps
(3) understand what datasets you’d like to see
(4) get feedback on the quality of our datasets.”

The following tool was featured on emily chang’s excellent siteeHub. eHub is a fantastic tool for bloggers in search of content, Web 2.0 entrepreneurs looking to stay up on the latest business models, and for anyone interested in new tools that make our lives easier. Thanks go to you Emily!

Rapid access to accurate information that comes from valid sources is the key to Realtor’s staying in tuned with their market, concerns facing buyers and sellers, and proving themselves valuable resources of information. One very simple, speedy tool that delivers instant city statistical information is the site icitydata.com.

What is icitydata’s value

According to icitydata: “Overall, iCityData strives to give the common person a simple yet effective database of accurate city information.”

How Does it Work?

You can search for city information categories:

1. Demographics

2. Social

3. Economic

4. housing

5. Zip codes

6. Area Codes

7. City Maps

Realtor Tip: City Comparisons

Visitors can also compare two cities based on the city name, zip code, or area code – a feature that proves useful for real estate agents, families looking to move, anyone planning a vacation, and more.

Today is the launch of deansguide’s “Published Article Resource Guide” page created to provide a quick, organized, and easy to utilize go-to source of how to’s, tips, guides, and steps to improve your business. This page and subsequent published article resource guide pages will be located on the right sidebar just below the “archives” page on deansguide.

The focus is on the real estate industry but these articles can help anyone needing an infusion of new ideas, strategies, or solid advice.

How do I know these articles are worthy of your time?

Everything on this reference page has been reviewed by professional editors and published by FoxBusiness.com. Subsequent pages for articles published by Reuters.com UK World News andNielsen.com’s“The Professional Network Small Business Resource Center-Small Business Tools” will be created in a few days.

If you like this idea and have comments, questions, or tips please leave your impressions below or email us at dean@innerarchitect.com.

Today marks the turning point and trumpets the arrival of the sea change in American media and culture; the revolution begins as the preeminent open source software platform for blogging, WordPress, creator Matt Mullenweg has received $29.5 million in a series B Funding for his company Automatic.

This event validates, legitimizes, and transforms the once thought art form ramblings of a dissident few into the collective “citizen journalistic” revolution of the next generation multi media channel in America.

This event is akin to Ray Kroc applying factory assembly line processes to a small hamburger stand and changing the way Americans ate out. Food cooked fast, delivered faster, with a smile and little wreckage to your wallet.

In my opinion we bloggers are perceived and mislabeled similar to the rantings that accompanied the name Andre Agassi when he first burst upon the tennis world. Andre was about “image” but as we all came to find out–Andre had great substance and style. He won with class and he won often.

Analysis: We (bloggers and consultants) continually stand up and make the unabashed statement that “Blogging is the sea change and next generation marketing that will change the media world as we know it” and today is another large granite block in the foundation of that posit.

* For those business owners, especially Realtors-brokers and mortgage brokers, to ignore the declining readership numbers and declining advertising revenue dollars of the large print media giants is to ignore the sea change.

* For those business owners to ignore the fact that former writers and prominent journalists are creating blogs and selling their offerings through ad based models essentially becoming their “own brand” is to lack vision. These journalists are leaving the constrictions of their newspapers and branding the same way real estate brokers have been branding their businesses for years.

* The most obvious signal that the real estate industry should adopt blogging comes with the simple fact that major print media newspapers are now requiring their writers to blog, they are hiring outside bloggers to write for them, and they are establishing their own ONLINE newspaper sites (ie. NY Times and WSJ) to capture the lost revenue they are leaking due to the internet and blogging revolution.

Resource Guide of Bloggers: The following list includes bloggers who are helping to transform and revolutionize the media landscape as we know it through their efforts. These bloggers are providing (free of charge) valuable and business changing information, strategies, tips, how to formulas, guides, and list. There are thousands of dollars worth of free information jammed packed into this list. Take advantage.

Everyday I am asked by someone in business or personal dealings “Hey Dean do you know someone or a company that can do____?” Because of this demand for best of breedservices and products, I am currently compiling a “Experts Board” which will perform the following functions:

1. Best of Breed Services: A group of companies and individuals, friends and contacts, that have high standards of practice chosen by deansguide for their professionalism.

2. One Stop Shop: A yellow pages type directory that allows deansguide readers the opportunity to locate, on a global scale, a multitude of services and products.

3. Networking: The opportunity to contact Expert Board members to initiate networking and possible synergy with your company.

The format will remain simple. We will provide pages with a description of the service/product, a short bio, and links to our experts. The idea is to make it simple, fast, and convenient to contact and begin communication with our expert friends at deansguide.

Please gives us feedback by commenting on this idea and any suggestions you would like to see integrated into the Expert Board directory.

If you are a Internet marketing professionals, Web 2.0 professionals, entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, real estate brokers, or product marketing managers then you should attend the WebGuild Web 2.0 Conference and Expo in the heart of Silicon Valley-Santa Clara, California.

Why should you attend?

1. Cutting edge topics: Information about the Web 2.0 World and marketing

Nielsen.com’s Professional Network Small Business Resource Center published this article January 12, 2008:

In Tool Kit #3 (Part 2) we will explore the second 5 truths that Google has discovered in doing business successfully. The biggest issue brokers and agents face is that the majority of the industry hates change, is unwilling to change with the times, constantly fights to horde information that the public already has access to, and does not understand that their revenue model is being challenged and will change in the near future.

If you are a broker looking for new ideas then take a deep breath–you may not like the following list.
6. You can make money without doing evil: Google’s revenue model is advertising. What differentiates Google is that they are very strict to adhere to the philosophy that they will only display advertising that is relevant to the search results of each page. “. . . only certain searches produce sponsored links. . . Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find. Google will never breach customer trust on this issue.

Q:Are you certain that you are providing your customers with relevant information, useful services, and things that the customer wants without forcing them to wade through unwanted or useless information or services?

7. There’s always more information out there: “Once Google had indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible.”

Q:Is your company constantly looking for new information, improving your business procedures, and attempting to educate your “human capital” on an ongoing basis?

8. The need for information crosses all borders: “Though Google is headquartered in California, our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world. . . We also offer a translation feature to make content available to users regardless of their native tongue.”

Q:Do you make your brokerages’ information easily accessible to your niche as well as a broad audience, are you sitting on your “local porch” and ignoring opportunity, and do you have tools in place to measure your audience’s response to your information?

9. You can be serious without a suit: “Google’s founders have often stated that the company is not serious about anything but search.” Although they have the most eccentric corporate benefits from gourmet cafes, bicycles, grooming, gourmet coffees, educational opportunities, and other incredible perks, Google always puts users first when it comes to there services.

Q:Does your agents and staff give off an air of superiority, haughtiness, or blatant snob appeal? Is everyone in your organization galvanized toward an overall company goal and purpose? Do your people perceive themselves as hard working or busy when in reality they are neither?

10. Great isn’t good enough: Like Nordstrom’s mantra “Under promise and over deliver”, Google believes in delivering more than expected. Google “does not accept being the best as an endpoint. but a starting point. “Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways. . . This constant dissatisfaction with the way things are is ultimately the driving force behind the world’s best search engine.

Q:Can you say that you are running your brokerage with your customers as your top priority, constantly searching for new ways to improve your services and procedures, and are you on a never ending quest to stay in front of the technology curve that is reshaping your industry?